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From University of Rochester: Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates. The study is the first to document the role that both parenting and sexual orientation play in the formation of […]

From the Atlantic, here is a review of Situationist Contributor Tim Wilson’s latest book: In our ceaseless quest for self-improvement and our relentless pursuit of happiness, most of us have had some brush with the world that lives on the spectrum between self-help books and legitimate clinical psychotherapy. But a compelling new (non-self-help) book suggests […]

From New York Times: Over the past 50 years, we’ve seen a number of gigantic policies produce disappointing results — policies to reduce poverty, homelessness, dropout rates, single-parenting and drug addiction. Many of these policies failed because they were based on an overly simplistic view of human nature. They assumed that people responded in straightforward […]

Over at the new Law & Mind Blog, several Harvard Law students have been blogging about about system justification theory. Here is one of those posts, written by first -year student Marty Ehlenbach. Yale Law Professor Amy Chua’s recently published book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has become a seemingly endless source of fodder […]

[This post was first published in October of 2007.] Several weeks ago, as part of its much lauded “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty,” Unilever released “Onslaught,” a video (above) examining disturbing images of women in beauty-industry advertising. The video ends with this admonition to parents: “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” It’s […]

On the heals of yesterday’s post about Marc Hauser’s research, we thought the following videos would be of interest to our readers (viewers). * * * From TheTechMuseum: Understanding Genetics – An interview with Marc Hauser at the Future of Science Conference in Venice, Italy September 2006. Part 1 (3:40): You’ve written that the human […]

It’s a truism that parents tend to think their children are above-average. Julie Symth of the National Post has an interesting piece on what social psychology can say about this phenomenon. She details a new study by Andrew Wegner and Blaine J. Flowers of the University of Miami in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology […]

A press release from Science Daily describes a study indicating (perhaps unsurprisingly) that family wealth may play a significant role in explaining standardized test scores of children. * * * A new study published in the March/April 2008 issue of the journal Child Development finds that family wealth might partly explain differences in test scores […]

Lauren Pelley of the Western Gazette writes about a study published in the February issue of Psychological Science that suggests that adults have it wrong when they attribute a sense of entitlement and narcissism to youth. The study’s lead author is Western University psychology professor Kali Trzesniewski. We excerpt portions of Pelley’s article below. * […]

We have previously devoted several posts to the powerful effect of self-schemas personal narratives and, more specifically, to the remarkable research by Carol Dweck regarding the importance of how people think about intelligence and learning. In February of this year, Po Bronson wrote a terrific article in New York Magazine, in which he provided a […]

Several weeks ago, as part of its much lauded “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty,” Unilever released “Onslaught,” a video (above) examining disturbing images of women in beauty-industry advertising. The video ends with this admonition to parents: “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” It’s a powerful video with a disturbing collection of images. […]

Words like “selfish” and “self-absorbed” are commonly associated with only children. But are those stereotypes based on any evidence? And might only children actually be better off than those with siblings? JuJu Chang and Sara Holmberg of ABC News examines those questions in an article we have excerpted below. * * * The myth of […]

Last month, we wrote about the unhappiness and unhealthiness associated with commuting by car. Today we bring you a more positive take on the situation of driving: how cars facilitate family discussions. Alison Roberts of the Modesto Bee has the story, and we excerpt portions of it below. * * * According to the 2005 […]